Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent Hose Nozzle.
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2018
I had been fed up with the trigger type of spray gun having owned quite a few which are fine initially but fail in one way or another after months or a year of use so I started looking for something better. I saw this type of nozzle on a car detailing video and liked the robust look of it together with the adjustable spray pattern so I looked around for a supplier and found it on Amazon. The reviews were generally good especially the stainless version so that is what I decided to buy.
There are two potential issues for the UK user:
1) The manufacturer recommends a 5/8" bore hose - this is not a common hose size in the UK, 1/2" being the standard domestic size with 3/4" and above for commercial and industrial applications. My hose is 1/2" and it works fine with that. Having said that our water pressure is 65 psi which is fairly healthy and I do not use Hozelock type fittings preferring the Geka ones because they don't leak and do not have self sealing couplings which create a significant pressure drop and thus reduce the flow.
2) The female thread is 3/4" Garden Hose Thread (GHT) or National Hose Thread (NHT) to suit the American market's 5/8" hoses. I knew this before I bought it and was sure that I could find a fitting or reducing nipple that would enable me to use the more common British Standard Pipe (BSP) threads. The manufacturer did not provide a clear answer to the simple question "what is the thread form and what is the size", instead they said a 5/8" hose will fit. When I said that we do not have that size hose in the UK but if you can answer my questions I can sort something out, the assistant simply copied and pasted some information about the garden hose thread that I had seen on the internet. I decided to wait until it arrived and sort it out then. The thread is a female 3/4" - 11.5 threads per inch garden hose thread. Other people have used a 3/4" BSP fitting on this with plenty of PTFE tape to create a seal but being a retired mechanical engineer I know that this is not a good solution so I searched for the correct one. As luck would have it I had a reducing nipple from GHT to BSP and it worked but I did get first rate service from GEKA (Karasto) in Germany who not only have the correct 3/4" GHT fitting (not in their online catalogue) but they sent me one free of charge - excellent.
I am delighted with this nozzle now that I have it connected up correctly. As for durability only time will tell if it is significantly better than cheaper trigger type guns. Some people would say just buy 3 or 4 cheaper guns but I find that using cheap stuff is not pleasurable.
As an aside, on my other hosepipe I have a Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) trigger gun, probably made by Geka, that is rubber covered and thoroughly robust. It seems to work perfectly apart from the fact that control of the spray pattern depends on keeping constant pressure on the trigger which is not always easy.